The Kolahoi Glacier is melting fast. For India and Pakistan, it presents a great opportunity to stop the violence in Kashmir and work together to solve this environmental crisis.

Kashmir Region (credit: Royal Geographic Society, Wikimedia Commons)

"Oh, pilot of the storm who leaves no trace, like thoughts inside a dream.Heed the path that led me to that place, yellow desert streamMy Shangri-La beneath the summer moon, I will return againSure as the dust that floats high and true, when movin' through Kashmir."

- Robert Plant, "Kashmir," 1975

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Though
its lyrics were inspired by a 1973 drive through the Sahara Desert in
Morocco, Led Zeppelin's famous song is named after a majestic and
fertile valley nestled between the Great and Middle Himalayas.
Unsurprisingly, Kashmir has always been a mystical place, and not just
to the people of Central Asia.

In the early first millennium, it
was a hotbed of Hinduism and later, Buddhism. Since the middle of the
14th century, Kashmir has been variously ruled by the Muslims, the
Mughal Empire, the Afghan Durranis, the Sikhs, the Dogras and the
British Empire. Today, India, Pakistan and China all lay claim to this
beautiful region surrounded by deep gorges carved by the Indus River.

The
clashes last fall between Indian troops and Muslim militants
have resulted in over 40 deaths and have led to India's tightening
military grip. There are now around 600,000 Indian troops deployed
there.

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On October 27, 2008, separatists called a general strike to mark
the anniversary of the day when the Indian army took control in 1947.
Businesses, schools, banks and government offices were closed in an
attempt to stop a plan to create a human chain as part of a peaceful
protest to Indian occupation.

Though this day has been marked by
the separatists since the militant uprisings began in 1988, this is the
first year that Indian officials took such harsh counterinsurgency
measures. Their troops have killed five militants during a gun battle
in the forests of Kishtiwar. Seventeen others were reported injured.

But
violence is just the tip of Kashmir's iceberg, so to speak. Kolahoi, a
twin-peaked glacier rising almost 18,000 feet (5,500m) into the sky, is
rapidly melting due to global warming. The glacier's importance cannot
be overestimated: Kolahoi is the region's only source of year-round
fresh water, and is the origin of the valley's teeming apple orchards
and rich fields of wheat, corn, rice and saffron.

Given the
violence, Kolahoi has not been the most accessible place for scientists
to visit. But local reports suggest that it has retreated up to half a
mile (800 meters) since the mid-1980s. Geologists estimate that, at the
current melt rate, the glacier will be totally gone in ten years.

In
August, President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan and Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh of India agreed to reopen trade in Kashmir in a
commendable rapprochement that will hopefully bear fruit as more and
more Kashmiris interact with some level of normalcy and get past 60
years of infighting. Last month was Ramadan, and Kashmir was relatively
quiet as Muslims spent the holiest month of the Islamic calendar in
prayer, reflection and fasting.

The recent skirmishes show that
it will take more than political handshaking and spiritual
contemplation to tamp down on the aggression. Perhaps the slow death of
Kashmir's lush valley will finally give its various inhabitants a
reason to put down their arms and find a common cause.

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President
Zardari and Prime Minister Singh should take this opportunity to form a
"Kolahoi Accord" that creates a bilateral research and development
committee with members from local governments, green businesses, trade
unions and environmental organizations such as The Energy and Resources
Institute (TERI) in Delhi and the International Union for Conservation
of Nature (IUCN) in Pakistan to come up with a sustainable solution to
save Kolahoi.

Parts of the plan could include trade incentives
on goods that depend on a healthy glacier, the development of
ecotourism and other market-driven initiatives to improve the
livelihood of millions of Kashmiris.

And the Kashmiri youth are
already one step ahead of the violence that has riddled Kashmir's past.
Instead of guns, they carry cameras to record instances of abuse, which
are then posted on the internet. Perhaps if India allows peaceful
protest and reduces the military tension a bit, the young photographers
could be enlisted to train their lenses on recording the effects of the
receding glacier instead of on public beatings by the police.

Whatever
a Kolahoi Accord may or may not accomplish, if it means giving the
violence a temporary rest to ponder the future of a glacier that
everybody needs, it's certainly worth the effort.

Reynard Loki is a New York-based artist, writer and editor. He is the environment and food editor at AlterNet.org, a progressive news website. He is also the co-founder of MomenTech, a New York-based experimental production studio whose projects (more...)